2015-10-31

Mood Shifts in Germany

IT’S getting darker and colder here in Germany, and it’s not just because winter is coming....Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy for refugees has soured....Ominous street protests, outfitted with mock guillotines, are now almost daily occurrences...they’re angry about more than just refugees...What’s worrying is that these fantasies of violence are the extreme expression of a sentiment that, in milder gradations, is taking hold of ever-larger parts of German society...Boris Palmer, the mayor of the prosperous university town of Tübingen, warned: “We can’t manage this.” As a prominent member of the liberal Green Party, Mr. Palmer is the last person to stir up xenophobia. Yet even he has warned that the refugee crisis means that “the social peace in this country is at stake.”

Within 5 years, 10 years at the most, the political landscape will be completely changed. These shifts are not temporary and they are happening during the period of a high social mood. These are the good times.